Venus Warriors rise up at Hideaway

It’s almost 30 years since some of the best black British musicians enfranchised themselves as Jazz Warriors, and now its lynchpin Courtney Pine has become the non-playing catalyst for a further step forward: the all female nine-piece, Venus Warriors. Their debut gig at Hideaway in Streatham is also a benefit for the Mary Seacole Memorial Statue – on its way to making the Crimea War nurse the first named black British woman so commemorated.

The saxes are contrastingly excellent. On alto, Camilla George leans back to take Horace Silver’s ‘Nica’s Dream’ on a sunnily full-toned, unhurried bop stroll. Tenorist Nubya Garcia is romantically cool and almost cockily off-hand on Joe Henderson’s ‘Jinrikisha’. “This is a project that I hope to see arise,” Pine says, concluding a warmly satisfying, significant night where every player delivered.